Liturgy Pacific is the on-line presence of Richard Geoffrey Leggett, Rector of Saint Faith's Anglican Church in Vancouver and Professor Emeritus of Liturgical Studies at Vancouver School of Theology. Here you will find sermons, comments on current Anglican and Lutheran affairs and reflections on the need for progressive orthodox Christians to re-claim our place on the theological stage.

Vanity of vanities,
says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

I, the Teacher, when
king over Israel in Jerusalem, applied my mind to seek and to search out by
wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has
given to human beings to be busy with. I
saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a
chasing after wind.

I hated all my toil in
which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to those who come
after me — and who knows whether they will be wise or foolish? Yet they will be master of all for which I
toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. So I turned and gave my heart up to despair
concerning all the toil of my labours under the sun, because sometimes one who
has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by
another who did not toil for it. This
also is vanity and a great evil. What do
mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun? For all their days are full of pain, and their
work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest. This also is vanity.

Hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church.

Thanks be to God.

The Psalm

Psalm 138 with the Refrain from Songs for the Holy One

Refrain (sung
twice)

Hear this, all you peoples; *

hearken, all you who dwell
in the world,

you of high
degree and low, *

rich and poor together.

My mouth shall speak of wisdom, *

and
my heart shall meditate on understanding.

I will incline
my ear to a proverb *

and set forth my riddle upon the
harp.

Refrain

Why should I be afraid in
evil days, *

when
the wickedness of those at my heels surrounds me,

the wickedness
of those who put their trust in their goods, *

and boast of their great riches?

We can never ransom ourselves, *

or
deliver to God the price of our life;

for the ransom
of our life is so great, *

that we should never have enough to
pay it,

in order to
live for ever and ever, *

and never see the grave.

Refrain

For we see that the wise die also;

like the dull and stupid they perish *

and
leave their wealth to those who come after them.

Their graves
shall be their homes for ever,

their dwelling
places from generation to generation, *

though they call the lands after their
own names.

Even though honoured, they cannot live for ever; *

they are like the beasts that
perish.

Refrain

The Second Reading

A Reading
from the Letter to the Colossians (3.1-11)

So if you have been raised with
Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right
hand of God. Set your minds on things
that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your
life is hidden with Christ in God. When
Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in
glory.

Put to death, therefore, whatever in
you is earthly: fornication, impurity,
passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). On account of these the wrath of God is coming
on those who are disobedient. These are
the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life. But now you must get rid of all such things — anger,
wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you
have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves
with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image
of its creator. In that renewal there is
no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian,
slave and free; but Christ is all and in all.

Hear what the
Spirit is saying to the Church.

Thanks be to God.

The Gradual Hymn

‘People Draw
Near to God in Their Distress’ Common
Praise #201

The Gospel

The Lord be
with you.

And also with you.

The Holy
Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Luke (12.13-21)

Glory to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

Someone in the crowd said to [Jesus],
“Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be
a judge or arbitrator over you?” And he
said to them, “Take care! Be on your
guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the
abundance of possessions.” Then he told
them a parable: “The land of a rich man
produced abundantly. And he thought to himself,
‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger
ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have
ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of
you. And the things you have prepared,
whose will they be?’ So it is with those
who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.

Saturday, July 27, 2013

During
the last fifteen years our church has been racked with conflict over the place
of gay and lesbian Christians in the life of the church. This conflict has divided friends, families
and congregations. It has led to
scriptural duels in which opponents fling Scripture at each other much in the
same way that the warring wizards and witches of Harry Potter’s world fling
curses and hexes at each other. Most of
the casualties have not been among the warring wizards and witches but among
those who have been on the sidelines.

One
of the scriptural passages that has been frequently invoked in this conflict
begins with are chapters 18 and 19 of Genesis where the destruction of Sodom and
Gomorrah is both debated and accomplished.
The great debate is over what the ‘sin’ of the cities is. For some this sin is sexual immorality with
an implication that this immorality is a homosexual one. But what is a more compelling explanation is
found in the word God uses to describe the reason for divine intervention: ‘How great is the outcry against Sodom and
Gomorrah and how very grave their sin!’ (Genesis 18.20). The word ‘outcry’ is a term used elsewhere in
the Hebrew Bible to the cry of victims of injustice and oppression (see Exodus
3.7 and Isaiah 5.7). [1] It suggests that the sin of the twin cities
is one of social and economic injustice, a very different kettle of fish, and
one which permeates our own societies. [2]

But
our debates about sexuality may have clouded our eyes to what is an even more
important teaching embedded in today’s reading from Genesis 18. This teaching emerges out of Abraham’s
bargaining with God over the fate of the two cities.

Notice that
Abraham’s demand is not that the guilty be punished and the innocent spared,
but rather that the Lord forgive [the entire city] for the sake of the innocent
. . . who are in it. [3]

What Abraham is pleading for God to
consider is that those who are righteous, who are faithful to God, even if they
are a tiny minority, shield the unrighteous, the violent, the unjust from God’s
justified anger and destructive power. [4]

Later
Jewish theological and spiritual reflection will develop this idea into the
notion that the world as we know it is shielded from destruction by the
existence of thirty-six righteous persons.
So long as there are these TzadikimNistarim, the ‘hidden righteous’,
God preserves this world, even if we were to fall into total barbarism. While this may seem at first to be a strange
teaching, it has at its core the belief in God’s compassion for all that God
has made and the unconquerable hope that God’s purposes for this creation will
be accomplished.

So,
what has this to do with us, Anglican Christians living in the second decade of
the twenty-first century? It is a
reminder that prayer matters. Prayer
shapes the one who prays in ways that we cannot imagine and forges us into
tools that God uses to renew the world in which we live. To be righteous is to seek to be faithful to
God at all times and in all places; to be righteous is to be a living sign of
God’s compassion and a source of hope for others.

It
is this kind of righteousness that Jesus seeks to establish among his disciples
when he teaches them how to pray.

‘Father,
hallowed be your name’: I once read a
foolish essay that suggested that God’s name is ‘Father’. When Jesus calls God ‘Father’, he is inviting
us to share in an intimate relationship with the one who created us. Even though the universe we inhabit is
immense, we dare to claim that the One who created all that is can be known and
experienced as personally as we know any other friend or family member.

‘Your
kingdom come’: In one brief phrase we
express our belief that God is sovereign and that God’s purposes will be
achieved. We are surrounded by real and
imagined authorities who sometimes act as if they are sovereign. While they have power over us, they cannot
claim our ultimate allegiance. This is a
radical political statement that we often make without contemplating the full
implication of it.

‘Give
us each day our daily bread’: With
another brief phrase we undermine all our illusions of self-sufficiency. All that we have is first and foremost a gift. Our every breathing moment is gift; every
morsel of food we eat is gift; every possession we have is ultimately gift.

‘Forgive
us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us’: There is no more difficult petition in
Christian worship. If there is one thing
that I know about myself, it is how hard it is for me to forgive. Yet, when I recite this prayer, I hold myself
hostage to bitterness and narrowness, so long as I am unable to forgive others. I tell you truly; I know too many people who
are burdened with wrongs that they cannot set aside and with wounds they keep
open.

‘Do
not bring us to the time of trial’: This
is a difficult petition and much ink has been used in trying to explain
it. I have found some guidance in a form
of the Lord’s Prayer that reads, ‘save us in
the time of trial’. We have faced, are
facing and will face temptations to turn away from following the way of
Christ. What we need is God’s wisdom
when we come to these moments and courage to act as Christians even when it is
not convenient to do so.

To
seek to live as one of God’s righteous ones is not about arrogance or pride or religious tribalism. Righteousness is found in
doing justice, fostering reconciliation, loving steadfastly and serving all of
humanity and all of creation with humility.
Each time the Lord’s Prayer is recited, we hear anew petitions that help
us understand the shape of genuine righteousness. We are reminded that the world is upheld not
by many but by a few 'oaks of righteousness' who are known to God and on whose behalf God continues to
work for the renewal of this fragile earth, our island home.

May
the number of God’s ‘hidden ones’ increase and may we be found among them. Amen.

About Me

Richard is a presbyter of the Anglican Diocese of New Westminster with a number of responsibilities. He is Rector of Saint Faith's Anglican Church in Vancouver. Richard is also the Principal Consultant for Liturgy Pacific, a worship consultancy providing educational seminars and resources for congregational life and ministry. After 23 years as a member of the faculty of Vancouver School of Theology, Dr Leggett became Professor Emeritus of Liturgical Studies in 2010. Since 1989 Dr Leggett has served on various national committees of the Anglican and Evangelical Lutheran churches in Canada and is a regular participant in the work of the International Anglican Liturgical Consultation. From 2010 to 2016 he was a Member of the Liturgy Task Force of the Anglican Church of Canada.